Can we ever go back in time to the way we were? Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” poses the question on two levels — the comings and goings of small town life in the early 1900s, and the minutiae of family life on the 14th birthday of young Emily, played by Samantha Rose.

For many people the first and last time they saw “Our Town” was in high school, but its story remains as relevant today as when it was first staged in 1938. Grover’s Corners is a small town in New Hampshire where not much happens. And yet the “nothing much happens” is what makes the play so endearing, because it strips family and town life down to the bare minimum — what happens in Grover’s Corners is what happened in Babylon thousands of years ago, and what happens in Palo Alto today.

The play is narrated and held together by the Stage Manager, played with consummate story-telling skill by Carla Befera. She tells us that the play is in three parts: Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and the unnamed third act about death, set in the cemetery.

“Am I pretty?” Emily Webb asks her mother. “Pretty enough for all normal purposes,” her mother, played by Edie Dwan, replies. But George Gibbs, just turning 16, thinks she’s more than pretty and asks her if she can give him homework hints, communicating through their upstairs bedroom windows, the last century equivalent of today’s cellphones. Peter Spoelstra plays George with a lovely innocence as his interest in baseball gradually gives way to his interest in Emily.

Mrs. Gibbs (Dee Baily) and Mrs Webb have been “making three meals a day for 20 and 40 years without a nervous breakdown,” says the Stage Manager (Carla Befera). And so it is that their offspring are joined in marriage and start the cycle all over. The ladies play their parts with a knowing calmness, the same tasks and chores day after day, like Stepford Wives, rising and falling with the emotions of the youngsters around them, emotions they have apparently long since left behind.

Wilder kept the set design and lighting purposely simple to keep the audience focused on the characters, and Bruce McLeod’s direction follows this template. The play easily spans the time difference between now and its 1901 setting, as we can all see a bit of ourselves or someone we know in the characters.

Just as we have been gently lulled into a comfortable, every-day-in-a-small- town-is-the-same feeling, the third act delivers the kicker, as Emily’s emotions boil over, but from the grave. She has died giving birth to her second child and now must view her old life from the cemetery. Rose’s Emily shows the raw emotion of a teenager but with the wisdom of an adult, as she sees her family preparing for her 14th birthday. She wants to go back, but realizes she can’t, as life is no longer hers.

Befera as the Stage Manager holds the play together expertly, as she leads us from scene to scene, and Spoelstra’s George shows touching innocence. But Rose’s Emily knocks us back with raw emotion and feeling. If you were only subjected to the play as a book in high school you should definitely see this production.

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